


Five Times Madeline Westen was at Least a Little Like a Spy

by florahart



Category: Burn Notice
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 02:54:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is only sort of peripherally associated with your request, but, you know, treat. :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Madeline Westen was at Least a Little Like a Spy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shrift](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrift/gifts).



1\. In 1983, she watched the premiere of Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and loved the efficient non-nonsense competence of Amanda King. She could be that woman, she thought--of course, she did still have the inconvenient husband, but she had two boys(okay, so they were older than Philip and Jamie, but that wasn't really the point) and she knew how to handle a crisis without freaking out completely. So yeah, if being a spy was being kind of a little like Amanda, then hell, she could do that.

2\. When Frank died, it took a while for her to go through his stuff, and when she did, well. There were things there she didn't want to see, but it had to be done. By then, Michael's line of work was becoming clear to her even if he'd never said (because when she wasn't like Amanda King, she was kind of a little like Christine Cagney with tracking down clues, and she wasn't an idiot), and as she was flipping through handfuls of crap--seriously, that man kept a lot of total crap--she learned a lot about his mistress(es), his debts (gambling and otherwise), and his business. She mostly didn't follow up on any of it, and she sure as hell didn't tell Michael, but if there was one thing she knew about the whole spy game thing, it was that having knowledge other people don't know you have is a bonus.

3\. When Michael came back from Ireland exhausted and unhappy about, well, now she knows about what, but at the time she had no idea about any of the details, she knew he wasn't going to tell her a damn thing, and she also knew he was going to go right back to work even though he was obviously, definitely, working himself straight into an early grave, and like it or not, she decided mothers got to pull rank about that. He wasn't going to be in Miami for long, but it was long enough; she sabotaged his alarm clock. Twice. He still doesn't know.

4\. Shooting a gun didn't come all that naturally, but once Madeline got a load of Fiona, okay, if that little scrap of a thing in heels up to here and a dress down to there could blow up a building with a rifle and a tiny little block of clay, then there was absolutely no reason she couldn't learn to handle herself. It wasn't like she needed protection every five minutes, because hey, Michael usually took care of the heavy hitters, but still, she probably wasn't going to be the kind of efficient ass-kicking machine Fiona was, oh, _ever_ , and certainly not without doubling her pilates quota, but the gun part, that she could do. (This is not to say she didn't come around, on the issue of Fiona as a suitable person with whom Michael should spend his time, but that came after she took a class in firearm safety and put in a few hours at a shooting range. What Michael doesn't know doesn't (usually) hurt him.)

5\. Yeah, sure there was no way that guy was going to talk. She knows Michael was kind of shocked and all, but she knew what she was doing going in, and she wasn't about to blow it. If that didn't make her a little like a spy, nothing else would.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Unlikely Inheritance (The Like A Spy Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/384218) by [Reddwarfer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reddwarfer/pseuds/Reddwarfer)




End file.
